Bloomberg News reports:

The biggest increase in employment in three years makes it “pretty clear” the deepest U.S. recession since the 1930s has ended, said the head of the group charged with making the call.

“I personally put lots of emphasis on employment,” Robert Hall, who heads the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, said in an interview. “I would say ‘pretty clear’ is a good description” for whether the economic contraction has ended, he said.

Among the top indicators the group uses is payrolls, according to its Web site. The government revised the January and February job count up by a combined 62,000, putting the March gain at 224,000 after including the updated data.

Does Joe Stiglitz still think otherwise? Last September, he predicted the recession would end in 2012.